The present invention generally relates to the entertainment industry and game business. More specifically, it relates to a game of chance that can be played in a casino version or a cardroom version. It covers a method and an apparatus for selecting a joker card in a poker game.
A five-card stud poker game has fascinated the public for years. A wide network of poker clubs and numerous poker tournaments is convincing testimony to its popularity. The number of poker game versions runs into dozens and is continuing to grow. Five card stud, Seven card stud poker, Draw poker, Texas hold'em--all these and other modified versions use the same basic priority or rank order of winning poker hands.
Till quite recently poker was exclusively a club game, i.e. a game in which the players play among themselves. It was practiced in cardrooms and casinos where the house provided facilities for the game and, if necessary, a croupier. The house only collected a commission of each player's winning to compensate the house for providing the service to the players and did not participate in the game.
For this reason, despite its obvious popularity, the poker game was for a long time unable to receive status and rise to the rank of a casino table game adapted for game houses and casinos in which the players could play against an impersonal party, the house or the casino, rather than against their fellow player.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,836,553 proved a veritable revolution in the game industry as it offered a poker game variant acceptable to a casino. The game which came to be known as Carribean Stud Poker practically spread throughout the world. Its later modifications are Oasis Stud Poker (the European version of Carribean Stud), Let it Ride (based on Texas hol'em), Three Card Poker, and others.
In order to heighten the players' interest in the game, attempts were made to change some poker rules and, wherever possible, to increase odds. Specifically, the practice of exchanging one, two and more cards for an additional wager in Oasis Stud Poker proved to be a very effective innovation. In some casinos players may "buy" an extra card for the croupier when the player has a very good combination, and the croupier does not qualify. This modification approximates Draw Poker.
One would expect that the next step along this line would be to include an extra playing card (the so-called joker card) in the 52-card deck which would increase the number of game combinations, add to the thrill of the game and bring it as close as possible to the classic version in which the highest rank combination is not Royal Flush, but a Five of a Kind. Yet no casino in the world could accept this innovation for one very simple reason: the introduction of an extra card in the deck as a joker would immediately make the game very vulnerable to all sorts of cheating. A marked joker card capable of increasing the rank of any available combination may prove to be ruinous to the casino or poker club owners.